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About the Conference

The goal of this conference is to stimulate multi-sector and multi-actor engagement, build and strengthen strategic partnerships/collaboration between stakeholders around the national strategy on the elimination of violence against women and girls in conformity with specific goals of the SDGs in Cameroon.

To expand on such collaboration and knowledge sharing, participation to the conference is open to other sub-Saharan African actors as well as global stakeholders with Cameroon and Africa as their areas of operation.

Event justification:

The different types and forms of violence against women/girls are still very present in Cameroon both within families and in the communities. In response, hundreds of local and international stakeholders ( local NGOs, international NGOs, local government agencies, diplomatic missions, UN missions, traditional leaders, victims and activists etc) are working hard daily to end this violation of the human rights of women and girls.

While this is visibly the situation on the ground, there is a lot of disconnection or loose communication and collaboration between these actors thereby reducing the power of collective voice that can influence local and national policy to speed up the process of eliminating violence against women and girls in Cameroon. Apart from the above, lack of collaboration and communication within stakeholders reduces data collection and information exchanges leading to lack of credible and accessible data that can be used to asses progress/gaps and inform policy and advocacy work. It is understandable that lack of such collaboration also leads to duplication of efforts and waste of limited resources.

Cameroon through the ministry of women’s empowerment and the family has made significant progress in promoting and upholding the economic, political and cultural rights of women and girls, the ambitious national strategic plan for the elimination of violence against women and girls accompanied by an elaborated stakeholders plan of action are clear indicators of the political goodwill of the government of Cameroon to eliminate violence against women and girls. However, the above political goodwill lacks a corresponding resource allocation and a sustained multi-sector statutory national platform for partnership/collaboration around the national effort.

It is our understanding that the present conference will provide an excellent platform that will strengthen knowledge sharing around the national response, reduce duplication and corresponding waste of resources, facilitate resource mobilization/mutualization, improve data collection, strengthen advocacy and above all speed the process of effectively eliminating violence against women and girls while opening an avenue for yearly stakeholder evaluation of national progress. That said, LUKMEF as an organization fully engaged in the fight against VAW/G is working on the following premise;

No one NGO can end the violence alone

Strong national stakeholders collaboration increases availability of safe and adequate services to victims, improve self esteem and increase willingness to seek available services

strong collocation between stakeholders will improve advocacy and easily influence policy for the better

It is therefore within the above context that we are proposing this ambitious yet achievable first ever national stakeholders conference on the elimination of violence against women and girls in Cameroon. The conference is planned to take place in 2018 bringing together over 500 delegates drawn from the different sectors and levels of engagement in the fight against violence directed to women/girls.

Our timing of the conference to take place before the many political elections planned in 2018 is a well thought through strategy to advocate for potential candidates to take on eliminating violence against women and girls as an integral part of their political agenda as they campaign for the 2018 local and national elections.